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Beginning with a Jeffersonian past, and ending with a look toward the future, the conversation, moderated by Clark Wolf, host of the Fales Library’s “Critical Topics in Food Series,” will center on a discussion about the renewed interest in sustainable agriculture for local consumption in America. The discussion springs forth from the re-birth of the White House Kitchen Garden, which in 2009, began anew a conversation in America about our production and consumption of food and healthy living.

MEDIA ONLY: Reporters interested in covering or attending the event must contact Christopher James at 212-998-6876 or email christopher.james@nyu.edu.

The panelists include:

· Cathal Armstrong, chef, Restaurant Eve in Alexandria, VA. Named to Food & Wine Magazine’s “50 Hall of Fame Best New Chefs,” Armstrong has a strong commitment to sourcing the best ingredients that local farmers can provide in the pursuit of excellence. Armstrong is also part of a new White House initiative, “Chefs Move to Schools,” part of the First Lady’s “Let’s Move!” campaign to solve the childhood obesity epidemic.

· Amy Bentley, associate professor of nutrition, food studies and public health, NYU. Bentley, a historian with interests in the social, historical, and cultural contexts of food, is the author of Eating for Victory: Food Rationing and the Politics of Domesticity.

· Skip Connett, organic farmer and writer. Connett is featured in an upcoming book, Eating Local - written by Janet Fletcher and published by Sur la Table. Copies will be available for sale at the event. Connett and his wife, Erin Flynn, operate Green Gate Farms in Austin, TX. His writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Mother Jones, JAMA, Nature Medicine and Rodale’s New Farm.

· George Reis, supervisor of sustainable landscaping, NYU. Reis studied horticulture and garden design at the New York Botanical Garden, and as a member of MetroHort, the Ecological Landscaping Association, and Northeast Organic Farming, he has adapted methods of organic land care to the urban gardens of NYU.

· Christine Muhlke, reporter, writer, and food editor for New York Times Magazine. Muhlke writes about the local farm scene around the country, peppering her reporting with recipes and tips coming from the farms themselves.

· Host: Clark Wolf, food and restaurant consultant. Wolf has more than thirty years of experience in the food industry and is founder and President of Clark Wolf Company, a New York-based food and restaurant consulting firm.

Secret Gardens, part of Fales Library’s “Critical Topics in Food Series,” is sponsored by New York University Fales Library; Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health; and Clark Wolf. The “Critical Topics in Food Series” is made possible in part by the generosity of the Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch Foundation.

About Fales Library and Special Collections:

The Fales Library, comprising nearly 200,000 volumes, and over 8,000 linear feet of archive and manuscript materials, houses the Fales Collection of rare books and manuscripts in English and American literature, the Downtown Collection, the Food and Cookery Collection and the general Special Collections of the NYU Libraries. The Fales Collection was given to NYU in 1957 by DeCoursey Fales in memory of his father, Haliburton Fales. It is especially strong in English literature from the middle of the 18th century to the present, documenting developments in the novel. The Downtown Collection documents the downtown New York art, performance, and literary scenes from 1975 to the present and is extremely rich in archival holdings, including extensive film and video objects. The Food and Cookery Collection is a vast, and rapidly expanding collection of books and manuscripts documenting food and foodways with particular emphasis on New York City. Other strengths of the collection include the Berol Collection of Lewis Carroll Materials, the Robert Frost Library, the Kaplan and Rosenthal Collections of Judaica and Hebraica and the manuscript collections of Elizabeth Robins and Erich Maria Remarque. The Fales Library preserves manuscripts and original editions of books that are rare or important not only because of their texts, but also because of their value as artifacts.